TechCrunch reports the European Commission has given Apple permission to acquire Beats Electronics. The approval was predicated partly on the fact that beats has a very small marketshare in Europe for both headphones and digital music. Apple still needs approval in the SU which it is expected to get. Then it can take on Bose which is suing Beats for patent infringement. And come on, you know Apple lawyers love a good patent infringement case, amiright?

The Verge reports OKCupid co-founder Christian Rudder has admitted that his site experimented on users as well. In one of three described experiments, users were told they were good matches for people they were bad matches for in order to measure the change int he rate of correspondence. Being told you were a good or bad match did have an impact but did not fully offset the calculated compatibility. Users were informed after the fact that they were part of the experiment.

KAPT_Kipper posted the Verge article that Amazon appears to be going after Square. 9to5 Mac showed off internal documents from Staples indicating an “Amazon Card Reader” will arrive on store shelves August 12 for $9.95 right next to Square and Staples’ own payments dongle.

And Ek sent us a report from Scouting the Refs.com detailing the rise and fall of NHL official Tim Peel’s Twitter account. Turned out Mr. Peel was excited to reach out to fans and put a human face on Referees, but he hadn’t read the rules closely. The NHL-NHLOA Collective Bargaining Agreement forbids officials from having have social media accounts. His time on Twitter was brief but burned brightly. We will miss you @TimTpeel

Our pick of the day comes from Julio M. Romero a fellow cordcutter: “I don’t know if you have already heard about this app/website/service is called canistream.it and is just that, a service that let’s you find out if that movie or show episode is available for streaming legally in different services iTunes, Amazon, play store, Netflix and some others. It even tells you prices so you can check which one is better for your wallet. The site is available as an app in the Apple & Android stores as well as the Windows Marketplace AND as a chrome extension. JMR